Networks and Transnational Communities of Letters: How Can Literary Studies Reclaim the ‘Network Turn’?

IN RECENT YEARS, SCHOLARS IN LITERARY STUDIES have increasingly been encouraged to move beyond disciplinary boundaries and engage with what has been termed the ‘Network Turn’ in the humanities. As a growing body of scholarship demonstrates, this network approach is undeniably providing literary specialists with new tools to explore, systematize and disseminate hidden complexities, often in a transdisciplinary fashion, across texts, genres and literary and historical contexts. A networked approach to literary texts has the potential of unveiling the layered and relational nature of cultural transmission. The transnational and translingual dimensions of texts, which are disseminated, adapted and translated across space and time, underscore the porousness of national boundaries. This is likely to encourage a more inclusive and nuanced picture of cultural transmission that recognizes collaboration and cross-cultural adaptation as the driving forces that have shaped and continue to shape literary texts. At the same time, by collectively embracing and exploring a broadly conceived network-based approach to Literary Studies, this Talking Point also aims to foster constructive critique, invite thoughtful feedback and encourage an ongoing collective critical reflection on its inevitable limitations, oversights and opportunities for growth and improvement, with a view to providing an ever-expanding critical network of scholarly voices on the very idea of network.